I'll spin a web and chuck you into a tree: a case of Aranea Ixobola

Child K age 10

Presenting complaint: ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder)

Medication: Mediknet, works for his concentration at school, but his sleep was worse. He tried Concerta but felt ill, his stomach hurt, he felt sick, and had a temperature. He only took it for one day.

K’s Medical background
Eczema as a baby, he was smothered in hydrocortisone cream.

Lots of chest infections, has had lots of antibiotics.

Asthma from age 4, gets it as soon as the weather changes. Has an inhaler. Hayfever in summer.

Has broken several bones.

Pregnancy
His mother was sick all the way through pregnancy, with all three children. K was born 3 weeks early, induced. He couldn’t breathe, he went blue, his lungs were not developed.

Crawled age 11 months, climbed before he could walk. Walked at 14 months.

Appetite: as a toddler he only ate things that tasted of banana.

Likes spicy food, fizzy drinks, milk, pizza. Hates shepherd’s pie, jacket potato.

Consultation
K is a small wiry child, dressed in yellow and black. He doesn’t keep still for a second. He scuttles along the floor on his bottom and arms, and bounces a ball in and out of his legs. His mum says he has very good upper body co-ordination.

His mum says: “If you want to know where K is, look up.” He is always climbing. He is very strong, with upper body strength. He climbs lamp posts, garages, walls. He has no fear.

Behaviour: his mum says: “He climbs the wall (this is a figure of speech to describe hyperactivity). He wakes up and it’s one of those days where he’s a little monster. He goes around winding people up.”

He has perfected the art of sarcasm, making witty, sarcastic remarks and clever comments in reply. He is not at all shy, gives cheeky responses: “I’m just clever. I know more than my mum, and I do more exercise.”

He contradicts his mother, telling her to shut up. So when his mother says he worries about her, he says: “I don’t worry about my mum, she doesn’t worry about me.” (Spontaneous denial).

One of his worries is that his mother will drown. At Legoland theme park he worried that water will flood everyone. If a bath is being run when he is in bed, he needs to get out of bed to check it is not overflowing. He gets up at night to change the bowl they placed for a dripping leak.

Concentration: his memory is bad, except for things he is interested in. He could tell you everything about the great fire of London. He can concentrate when drawing.

K draws me a picture of a hornet during the consultation.

He is argumentative. His mum says: “he will do stuff (I tell him to) but he argues first.”

He is very loving to his mother, he tells her he loves her lots, but he is horrid to his younger sister, chipping away at her with sibling rivalry and competition, little things like who will brush their teeth first. They fight and he whacks her. He says “I haven’t got ADHD, I’ve got ADHS, S stands for sister, my sister’s dumb.”

Sleep: he finds it very difficult to get to sleep. He never sleeps in bed, he sleeps on the floor, or on a cupboard.

Sport: he likes football, but doesn’t want to play in a league with a football team, he doesn’t like the structure.

Nightmares: he has nightmares every night. “I went into a building with two boys. A zombie had babies. A boy went into the toilet and got killed. The zombie was just sitting there in a chair. Dead still.”

He has a pet spider – Cyril – in the shed. He is mad on Spiderman. “I will unleash what is there. I’ll spin a web and chuck you into a tree.”

Remedy: Aranea Ixobola 30C – given daily for a month

Analysis

Spiders
Restless, fidgety, constantly moving, bouncing the ball.

He climbs the walls. He scuttles along the floor on his bottom and arms, like a spider!

Climbing, “if you want to know where he is, look up.”

Cheeky, oppositional, one upmanship (“I’m clever, I know more than mum.”)

Witty, sarcastic, teasing, “he’s a little monster, winding people up.”

Likes banana, and craves spicy food.

He’s Spiderman mad, and he has a pet spider. “I’ll spin a web and chuck you into a tree.”

The nightmare of a zombie, dead still, that will kill you in the toilet, reflects a nightmarish spin on the phobia some people have of meeting a spider in the bathroom, and reflects that in real life many spider bites occur in the outside toilet.

So which spider?
Tarantula is the best known, the bench mark spider remedy but we don’t see the characteristic music and dancing and rhythm in this case, or the sly destructiveness. Tarantula is a ground dwelling spider, it jumps and pounces. This case seems to indicate a web weaving spider, suspended higher off the ground.

He has many symptoms common in ADHD, fidgeting, defiance, oppositional nature, lack of concentration or inattention to subjects that are not interesting in the classroom, and many common to spider remedies, restlessness, teasing, and physically, suffocation.

So what are the more characteristic aspects of his case?

Boasting, confidence, one upmanship

Teasing, winding people up

Climbing

Concern for his family

Fear of water

Aranea Ixobola is the cross spider, a garden spider that spins a web. Their web is destroyed by rain, and we know the fate of Incy Winsy Spider in the nursery rhyme, who climbs up the drainpipe and is washed away down the plughole...

Aranea Ixobola as a remedy picture is more confident than the smaller Aranea diadema which can suffer from low self esteem. The ixobola remedy picture is cheeky, boastful, teasing, sarcastic. Also keen on exercise, football, going to the gym, training, boxing. It can be a remedy for repeated broken bones, sports injury, tendons, ligaments. The sensation is Crunch!

Aranea spiders tend their young and in the Aranea ixobola remedy picture there is a tendency to worry about their health and concern for loved ones’ health is amplified.

Physical symptoms in Aranea ixobola include eczema and asthma.

Follow up
K is sitting down – for the first time, playing.

His mother says she wasn’t expecting anything from the remedy but there has definitely been an effect. “It has brought him down a peg or two. He is not climbing as much, he is playing on the computer game, which calms him down at the time.”

He is less oppositional and less anxious. His concentration has improved.

Eczema: K’s eczema is normally worse in summer when it is hot and sticky. Chlorine aggravates his eczema, but it has not been bad. Usually, he gets hay fever, his eyes are puffy, and he has a runny nose all through summer, but he has not been suffering from hay fever. His sister has had hay fever and needed medication, but he has not needed to take any. His mother remarks that she has not had to take him to the doctors.

Sleep: he has been ready to go up to bed, not getting up and coming downstairs. He has been sleeping in his bed, not waking up as often. He has not been having nightmares.

Fears: he has not been worried about his mum at all, even when they were on holiday and it rained lots, which is when they would expect to see anxiety.

He had one dream of a swimming pool where they were teaching him how to survive a shark attack, with a mechanical shark. He was the last one to be eaten.

Sibling fights: when he fights with his sister now they notice when it is her fault, she whacks him and he whacks her back. But he will back down a bit now, which he never used to do.

One day, they forgot to give him his remedy and his sister noticed because of the change in his behaviour, when he hasn’t had the remedy he goes round winding people up, and being sarcastic.

Remedy: continue Aranea ixobola 30C

Treatment continued and he did well on Aranea ixobola (with a miasmatic remedy Tuberculinum as an intercurrent).

His sleeping habits improved, his concentration improved, his allergies were relieved. He had not done well on medication because of the side effects but he was able to manage his ADHD with the help of homeopathic remedies.

Measuring outcomes
His outcomes were measured over a year as part of a larger case series of children diagnosed with ADHD. Outcomes were measured using MYMOP (Measure Your Own Outcome Profile)[1] and the Conner’s Parent Questionnaire (a generic measure of ADHD symptomatology)[2]. The symptoms his mother chose to measure using MYMOP (which allows you to choose 2 symptoms ‘which bother you most’ were: ‘lack of concentration’ and ‘sleeping’. Over the year his lack of concentration improved from 6 (as bad as it could be) to 2, and his sleeping improved from 5 to 3.

[1] MYMOP is an outcome measurement developed by Dr Charlotte Paterson which has been found to be able to capture the non specific effects of CAM treatments such as homeopathy http://www.bris.ac.uk/primaryhealthcare/resources/mymop/

[2] The Conner’s Questionnaires are used by paediatricians in the diagnosis and progress of ADHD

Photos: Wikimedia Commons
Spiderman; Huhu; Public domain
Cross spider; Vera Buhl; Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licence